Funky Windows install problems get interesting...

[Breadfan]

Ok, things keep getting interesting.

I took out both the windows and windows.000 directories, and did a full Norton Virus scan. No viruses, btw.

Anyway, put the drive back in his comp and no luck. Still locks up...the odd thing is that when the "prepare setup wizard" bar reaches 100%, it seeks the floppy drive...I've tried it with no disk, with a win98 boot disk and a winME boot disk, locks up no matter what.

So I go back in to C drive in dos, and notice another directory named WININST0.400. The O's are zero's, btw. So I go into it and its full of windows files like INF's, it has its own WIN.INI and GDI.EXE. Anyway I wiped it out.

I tried to reinstall and again, no luck. Go back to C and to my surprise, THERE IS WININST0.400 AGAIN! So I wipe it out again, reboot, and check...yep, its there again. It keep reappearing.

Now its odd...it takes along time to delete cuase its such a big file. Its obviously not relaly deleting though, or is being restored after I delete it.

I checked the WIN.INI file, and at the top of the EDIT screen in Dos it calls itself "Mini-Windows".

I checked the size of GDI.EXE and its 220kb in this dir. On a normal Win98 machine GDI.EXE is over 330kb.

The only rational explaination is that this directory is for the GUI of the installer for Windows. But, 220kb sounds kinda large for just the installer...and, the same directory appears no matter waht install I do (98, 98se, or ME). And it reappeared the last time without starting a Windows install.

So I've got a few people that want to look at this directory. I'm gonna move that drive to our computer with the CDburner and put it on CD.

I'm also about to run a Bloodhound search for Viruses on Norton...maybe it'll pick up some suspicious files on that drive. That'll be interesting to see what it finds.

Also I'm gonna burn that WININST0.400 directory so I can look more closely at it.

Anyone got any thoughts on this one?
Mike

[Super]

Maybe the company that made the PC put their own little protection file on it? Like so no one will screw around the computer but them.

[Ridenow]

Screwy.

My opinion is this is something that could take a lot of time and frustration to figure out. You will probably get it in a few days. If you can, back up the data, wipe and reload.

[Breadfan]

Yeah, I'm gonna not wipe it today, give myself the weekend to think through things. I'll probably back up what I can off his drive for him though...

I burned that odd directory onto CD, and I'm gonna pass it out to a few people I know around here that might be interested, and we'll take a closer look at it....I'm curious what Mini-Windows is, lol. By the way, the directory was only 13.5mb...

Mike

[Breadfan]

I noticed in my registry today that Windows has a reference to WININST0.400. That is the temporary directory for the setup program...you can find that reference at:

HKEY_LOCAL-MACHINE
Software
Microsoft
Windows
Setup

So, all the excitement was over nothing...well I can't say there was much excitement, I had a feeling thats what I was seeing, just hoping it was something more fun :)

Mike

[CrystalMethod]

Did your system come Pre-installed? When we do a Pre-install of a certain type of install, we're required to run a DMI config editor. It changes stuff in windows and in the Bios. Has the company logo show up on just about everything that you never look at. The only reason ppl buy it, is because they get an OS, with Serial#, but just a "restoration" cd, instead of the actual Win cd, and it's about half the price of the actual Win. If your machine came with one of those installs. That might be the problem there. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to look at what the DMI config did exactly. Might not be the problem, but it does give me something to do Monday morning.

[Paiynn]

Yes that is the temp directory created when installing NT/2k. The reason it would be coming back is that its loading from the MBR I'd assume. Even if you got past the lockups trying to install 98 or ME it wouldnt work right because the MBR has already been set by NT/2k.

I dont know what kind of machine you're working with here but having the virus detect enabled in BIOS is a great way to not get your OS loaded. I've also seen an some older machines where they would crash on loading OS if the CPU wasnt jumpered properly. Like, an AMD K6-2 300 jumpered at 100mhz when they are actually a 66mhz. Even though the machine seemed to post ok at 100mhz. Racked my brain on that one a few years back. I had 3 identical 300's I was assembling and they were all doing the same thing :)

[minoukat]

Originally posted by CrystalMethod
Did your system come Pre-installed? When we do a Pre-install of a certain type of install, we're required to run a DMI config editor. It changes stuff in windows and in the Bios. Has the company logo show up on just about everything that you never look at. The only reason ppl buy it, is because they get an OS, with Serial#, but just a "restoration" cd, instead of the actual Win cd, and it's about half the price of the actual Win. If your machine came with one of those installs. That might be the problem there. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought to look at what the DMI config did exactly. Might not be the problem, but it does give me something to do Monday morning.

Where do you get this DMI config program ? and can it change restore CDs ?